This is what I don't understand: All of a
sudden nothing seems to matter.
First, they said they wanted Bin Laden "dead
or alive." But they didn't get him. So now they
tell us that it doesn't matter. Our mission is
greater than one man.
Then they said they wanted Saddam Hussein,
"dead or alive." He's apparently alive but we
haven't got him yet, either. However, President
Bush told reporters recently, "It doesn't matter.
Our mission is greater than one man."
Finally, they told us that we were invading
Iraq to destroy their weapons of mass destruction.
Now they say those weapons probably don't exist.
Maybe never existed. Apparently that doesn't
matter either.
Except that it does matter.
I know we're not supposed to say that. I know
it's called "unpatriotic."
But it's also called honesty. And dishonesty
matters.
It matters that the infrastructure of a foreign
nation that couldn't defend itself against us has
been destroyed on the grounds that it was a
military threat to the world.
It matters that it was destroyed by us under a
new doctrine of "pre-emptive war" when there was
apparently nothing worth pre-empting.
It surely matters to the families here whose
sons went to war to make the world safe from
weapons of mass destruction and will never come
home.
It matters to families in the United States
whose life support programs were ended, whose
medical insurance ran out, whose food stamps were
cut off, whose day care programs were eliminated
so we could spend the money on sending an army
to do what did not need to be done.
It matters to the Iraqi girl whose face was
burned by a lamp that toppled over as a result of
a U.S. bombing run.
It matters to Ali, the Iraqi boy who lost his
family - and both his arms - in a U.S. air attack.
It matters to the people in Baghdad whose water
supply is now fetid, whose electricity is gone,
whose streets are unsafe, whose 158 government
ministries' buildings and all their records have
been destroyed, whose cultural heritage and social
system has been looted and whose cities teem with
anti-American protests.
It matters that the people we say we "liberated"
do not feel liberated in the midst of the
lawlessness, destruction and wholesale social
suffering that so-called liberation created.
It matters to the United Nations whose integrity
was impugned, whose authority was denied, whose
inspection teams are even now still being
overlooked in the process of technical evaluation
and disarmament.
It matters to the reputation of the United States
in the eyes of the world, both now and for decades
to come, perhaps.
And surely it matters to the integrity of this
nation whether or not its intelligence gathering
agencies have any real intelligence or not before
we launch a military armada on its say-so.
And it should matter whether or not our government
is either incompetent and didn't know what they
were doing or were dishonest and refused to say.
The unspoken truth is that either as a people we
were misled, or we were lied to, about the real
reason for this war. Either we made a huge - and
unforgivable - mistake, an arrogant or ignorant
mistake, or we are swaggering around the world
like a blind giant, flailing in all directions
while the rest of the world watches in horror or
in ridicule.
If Bill Clinton's definition of "is" matters,
surely this matters. If a president's sex life
matters, surely a president's use of global force
against some of the weakest people in the world
matters. If a president's word in a court of law
about a private indiscretion matters, surely a
president's word to the community of nations and
the security of millions of people matters.
And if not, why not? If not, surely there is
something as wrong with us as citizens, as
thinkers, as Christians as there must be with some
facet of the government. If wars that the public
says are wrong yesterday - as over 70% of U.S.
citizens did before the attack on Iraq - suddenly
become "right" the minute the first bombs drop,
what kind of national morality is that?
Of what are we really capable as a nation if
the considered judgment of politicians and people
around the world means nothing to us as a people?
What is the depth of the American soul if we can
allow destruction to be done in our name and the
name of "liberation" and never even demand an
accounting of its costs, both personal and public,
when it is over?
We like to take comfort in the notion that people
make a distinction between our government and
ourselves. We like to say that the people of the
world love Americans, they simply mistrust our
government. But excoriating a distant and
anonymous "government" for wreaking rubble
on a nation in pretense of good requires very
little of either character or intelligence.
What may count most, however, is that we may
well be the ones Proverbs warns when it reminds
us: "Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they
value the one who speaks the truth." The point
is clear: If the people speak and the king doesn't
listen, there is something wrong with the king. If
the king acts precipitously and the people say
nothing, something is wrong with the people.
It may be time for us to realize that in a country
that prides itself on being democratic, we are our
government. And the rest of the world is figuring
that out very quickly.
From where I stand, that matters.
